


meet your heroes

by shcherbatskayas



Series: a different breed of star [2]
Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing, Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Idols, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Crushes, Disillisionment, F/M, Gen, Light Angst, Sibling Headcanons, companion fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 10:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13028682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shcherbatskayas/pseuds/shcherbatskayas
Summary: "Peko wondered exactly when she had gotten so stupid, wondered if there was a specific moment in time when she became an idiot who believed in things like idols being good people and crushes working out somehow. If she could find it, she would go back and change it, but Peko didn’t think that the moment was findable. It had been a series of moments, probably, all of them lined up in a hopeful little row like dominoes just waiting to be knocked down. For her own stupidity, Peko figured she deserved to have them fall."





	meet your heroes

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm a huge sucker for companion fics, have this! This is essentially just "permanently fleeting" in Peko's POV, but reading that fic isn't neccessary for understanding this one at all. Also y'all will have to pry my sibling headcanons from my cold, dead hands. Kiyotaka and Peko and Maki are all half-siblings and canon can't do shit about that. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy! <3

It starts off extraordinarily. Peko Pekoyama is standing in line with two of her best friends in the whole world and they’re actually going to get to meet and talk to the stars of their favorite band after getting to watch them in _concert_ , which was already better than Peko could ever dream, better than any illegal video could even think of capturing. She wasn’t one prone to excitement or to silly displays of emotions, but she couldn’t help bouncing on the balls of her feet as she waited, twisting the paper she had brought (math homework, the only thing that had been in her bag) back and forth, back and forth, back and forth again.

“I can’t believe we actually get to meet them!” Ibuki declares for the fifth time since they’ve been standing there. “This is like, a total dream come true!”

“Mhmm.” Peko agrees, still twisting the paper and craning her neck to get a view of them. She can see the top of Rantaro’s head, bright green and ducked to sign something in front of him, the edge of Mondo’s hair (Peko still thought it looked ridiculous, but Ibuki and Akane thought that the pompadour was the height of fashion and Peko didn’t care enough about hair to fight them on it), and a few scattered fans happily babbling away. She couldn’t see Fuyuhiko. 

It was a shameful, silly thing, for her to have a crush on an idol. Peko knew it. But there just was something about him, something in his honesty and the way he almost sank into whatever song he was singing like he was drowning and something about all the interviews she read in crappy tabloids on the train from Amagasaki to Osaka and Osaka back to Amagasaki that made her chest flutter and her cheeks go red. It was one of the few times she actually felt fifteen, looking at him. She felt fifteen and alive and like there was something out in the world that wasn’t made entirely out of rust. 

“Hey, do ya think he’ll actually be mean today?” Akane asks between handfuls of popcorn, clearly referring to Fuyuhiko and his less-than-stellar reputation with fans.

Peko shakes her head “I don’t think so.”

“Well, of course _you_ don’t think so.” Ibuki teases, flicking Peko’s cheek. “You have a big ol’ crush on him!”

“...True.” Peko saw no need to try and shoot that one down. “But he looked happy when he was performing, so I would think not.”

“That makes sense!” Akane agrees, handing some popcorn to Peko. She takes some and bites down, her mouth filling with butter. 

“Peko’s always good at making sense.” Ibuki says, stealing some of the popcorn from Akane’s bag as well. “It’s like, what she does.”

Peko says nothing to that, just lets herself be happy for a moment as the line moves forward. It’s quicker the closer that they get to the table, everyone rushing by frantic fast. Cameras are everywhere, bright white and blinding, and the chatter gets louder and it’s _exciting_ , it’s _fun_ , Peko’s been in the middle of chaos before but it’s never been chaos like _this_ , a cheerful circus parade rather than some mid-street tragedy. She could drown in it, she could disappear here, let the line go on infinitely and things could go on and on and on like this. She’s ridiculously, foolishly happy here. 

They’re one spot away, and Peko can see him now. Her breath catches in her throat and she can’t quite believe it, but it’s true. It’s Fuyuhiko. He’s _right there_. He’s close enough to touch. She can see the freckles dotting his face from this distance, can see the swirls shaved into his head up close, can see the veins on his neck and the way his hands move and Akane and Ibuki are talking behind her, but she scarcely hears them over her own heartbeat. 

Cool. 

Cool. 

She has to be cool.

(And wow, _he’s_ so cool!) 

It’s their turn now. Ibuki and Akane start talking to Makoto and Rantaro at the same time, but Peko doesn’t wait there. She knows who she wants to see and what she wants to do. 

Fuyuhiko is a little less beautiful than the posters made him out to be up close, but Peko thinks that makes him more charming. There’s little flaws in him, a little line of scar tissue by his temple and a beauty mark by his lip that’s usually downplayed or edited out entirely. She’s close enough to count freckles, close enough to brush hands, closer than she ever dreamed. The meet-and-greet tickets had been a few thousand yen extra and Peko had worked two extra shifts in order to scrape up the money for them, but in that moment, it seemed so utterly worth it. 

“Hello.” She begins, sliding the paper onto the desk in front of him. Her voice is quieter than normal, a little shakier. Peko is hyper-aware of her own body, of the braids swinging by her face and the bookbag on her back and her own freezing fingertips. She wishes that she was prettier in that moment, less lanky and awkward, more like a model. Peko knows that one of her half-sisters is a model, one of the ones in Tokyo. She can’t remember if it’s Madoka or Masako. She wishes that she looked a little more like them, but they got their mother’s looks more than their father’s and there’s very little Peko can do about that. She can’t change the side she’s related to them on, after all. 

Fuyuhiko scoffs, and Peko’s heart stops for a second. Had she done something wrong? Said something stupid? “Peko Pekoyama.” He says, shaking his head. “Your parents must’ve hated you a lot, huh?”

Okay, _that’s_ a low blow. She didn’t know that Hisako’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies was known enough that he knew that a parent joke would sting, but she doesn’t question it. Her school is made up of girls like her, orphans and wards of the state and kids with poor parents who are just trying their best. It was a remark that stung, a remark that made her recoil, but she was careful to try and keep her face calm, to not let it show. Her parents probably _did_ hate her a lot. She knew them both and got that sort of vibe, like she was more commodity than child to them. “I suppose so.” She says, deliberately calm, cool in a way she hadn’t wanted to be but was very used to. 

He says nothing. He just signs the paper. His signature is bright green and sloppy and dominates the page, going over her carefully calculated equations with a carelessness she almost couldn’t love. Peko doesn’t know what to say, still reeling from his comment. So, maybe the tabloids were right. A rare occasion, sure, but a possible one. Stranger things had happened. 

(She can’t stop looking at him, can’t make her eyes move from his face and can’t hear anything besides a ringing in her ears. It’s ceaseless and stinging. It makes her want to hide under a fort of pillows for five hundred years, but there’s nothing soft here to hide behind. There’s just a bored, listless face in front of her and the ringing that gets louder and louder as color drains from her face and Peko wonders if this is what it feels like to faint. She’s never fainted before, so she doesn’t know, but she thinks it might be something a little like this.)

Fuyuhiko turns away from her. Turns towards Akane and Ibuki. She’s distantly aware of the fact that they’re still talking, that they’re talking as loudly as they always do, but the noise makes no sense to her. It’s like listening to screamo underwater, trying to understand what they're saying now. “Won’t you two shut the fuck up? God, you’re both so _annoying._ ” He complains, shooting a glare their way. 

The ringing is deafening and something white-hot and furious rises up in her chest. Fuyuhiko could hurt her and she wouldn’t get mad--she was used to hurting, after all--but hurting her friends? They had been doing nothing, just enjoying themselves, just being like everyone else and somehow they were the targets of his anger. It wasn’t fair. Peko only half hears their reactions, can’t make herself focus on words she could predict when she’s busy glaring a hole into Fuyuhiko’s skull. She wonders if his brains will melt out the other side, hopes that they will. 

“You know, you’re not better than anyone.” Peko says, and he blinks at her like she told him that the moon was actually made of Swiss cheese and that she had definite proof of it. She goes on, finding that her own words are the only thing that makes her ears stop ringing. “You don’t get to just treat my friends like that because you’re in a popular band. You should apologize.”

It comes out more like a command, _You should apologize_ , and Peko thinks it’s better that way. Thinks it gets her point across better. Everyone had been right about him, she realizes. He was arrogant and he was mean and he was a brat. He wasn’t even worth the dirt on the bottom of Akane Oowari’s worn-out sneakers. Anger keeps bubbling and boiling in her chest, blood is rushing back to pale cheeks and she catches a glimpse of herself in the reflections of camera light. She looks less like the corpse she remembers herself as, more like a ghost. A ghost that is improbably and startlingly alive.

“Who are you to tell me what I should do, huh?!” Fuyuhiko glares up at her properly, but the look doesn’t even make her blink. She’s seen worse glares, meaner faces, heard uglier words than his. They still hurt, but she’s dealt with worse. Peko isn’t intimidated anymore. “Maybe your friends shouldn’t be so bothersome. I’ve had to deal with five hundred of you pieces of shit tonight, and they’ve somehow managed to be the most annoying of all of them. It’s almost impressive, really. A moralistic bitch and her entourage of idiots. You guys must be real popular at school.”

Peko doesn’t respond to that with any words. There are no words for him. All he wants to do is hurt, and all a proper response will do is give him more leverage for causing pain. She knows how that operates. She’s played that game. She’s played that game and won. So she takes the paper in front of her. Looks at the equations she agonized over and then helped Ibuki with while they ate takoyaki. Remembers turning it in and getting it back. Remembers finding it in the bottom of her bag and choosing this to be the paper. It seemed magical then. It looks like any old piece of paper now. 

She fold it in halves. Fourths. Eights. Sixteenths. Thirty-seconds. Sixty-fourths. Pieces too small to count. Peko meets his eyes and rips it along the neat lines that she created. Fuyuhiko looks shocked, stunned into silence, looks like she just managed to do a cartwheel over a skyscraper. Peko then takes the little pieces, gathers them up in her hand, and blows them in Fuyuhiko’s face like she’s blowing him a kiss. 

Before he can say anything to her, Peko walks away. 

***

She meets up with Ibuki and Akane outside. They’re complaining about how awful Fuyuhiko is to try and cheer her up and maybe one day she’ll have the energy to join them, but now, Peko is just tired. They hop on the train home and Akane falls asleep on Peko’s shoulder and while she does, Peko thinks of better uses for the money she spent on meet-and-greet tickets. 

The first thing that pops into her mind is her mother. Those extra yen could’ve gone into her groceries, or, more than likely, whatever habit she’s picked up since she dropped the heroin. Still, it would’ve been the proper thing to do with it. Then there’s her full brother. Shinji could’ve gotten a new soccer ball with that money. He needs a new one, she thinks. He’s eight and on a team with twelve year olds because he’s too damn talented for his own good and plays so much that he kicks the thing into oblivion. He would’ve appreciated it, would’ve bragged about the ball to all of his friends, he might’ve even gave her a hug. That would be better than hearing Fuyuhiko remind her about her parent’s distaste for her. 

After Shinji, half-siblings come to mind. There must be a thousand of them, scattered across Asia like stars, ages ranging from twenty-five to two, all of them long-limbed and red-eyed with their mother’s last names. Peko can’t even name all of them, but they’re always coming to her, hoping that she’ll use her extra scholarship money to bail them out of whatever trouble they’ve gotten in. Maki is better at turning them away than Peko is. Peko can’t help but give them enough for a cup of coffee. Maki can’t help but give them enough bruises to send them to a first aid kit. 

Maki. Maki needs a new scarf, she thinks. Her current one has threads hanging from it like the broken edges of a spider’s web. Maki would’ve pretended to not care about it, but she would’ve appreciated a new scarf. Would’ve worn it on the colder days that December was just starting to give them. It would’ve been nice to give her one, the only half sister she saw regularly, the only one who she had dropped the half around. Maki was just her sister these days, and her sister needed a new scarf. 

And Kiyotaka, the only legitimate Ishimaru, he would’ve liked a gift. A new notebook, maybe, or one of those candles that smelled like lemongrass and clean laundry to light during his endless study sessions. He would’ve been over-appreciative, but that was charming in its own way, too. She could’ve wandered the shops for a little bit and come back with something good for him. It would give her an excuse to go over to the Ishimaru house, too, maybe exchange a few words with her father to make him feel a bit uncomfortable, the way that Peko felt every Father’s Day of her life. That really would’ve been nice. 

Instead, she wasted her money on a meet-and-greet and got her dreams crushed. 

Peko wondered exactly when she had gotten so stupid, wondered if there was a specific moment in time when she became an idiot who believed in things like idols being good people and crushes working out somehow. If she could find it, she would go back and change it, but Peko didn’t think that the moment was findable. It had been a series of moments, probably, all of them lined up in a hopeful little row like dominoes just waiting to be knocked down. For her own stupidity, Peko figured she deserved to have them fall. 

The three of them stumble back to the dorms, all but sleepwalking. Maki’s still awake when Peko gets back, surrounded by textbooks that are opened yet unread. 

“Have fun meeting your dreamboy?” She asks, a little bit of bite in her voice. She always teased Peko about her fondness of boy bands, always thought it was silly. Peko never minded. 

“It turns out that he’s awful.” Peko mutters, kicking off her shoes and undoing her hair with shaky, awkward hands. 

“Never meet your heroes.” Maki says, and then adds on something else. “I told you so.”

She sighs, loud and clear and distressed in her own mild way. “You did.”

Maki looks a Peko a little longer, watches her struggle with her hair, and gets up before pointing to the edge of Peko’s bed. “Sit down.”

Peko does not question it. She sits down and lets Maki unbraid her hair and pretend to be a cynic for a while and when Peko sleeps through the alarm and doesn’t get up in time for school, Maki covers for her. Says she has a fever. Says that she needs a day off. Her teacher doesn’t push the issue, not with Maki, and Peko can’t think of a time that she’s loved her sister more. 

***

Things go on. Peko considers deleting all of their songs from her phone, but she can’t make herself do it. She still is fond of the rest of the band, the rest of them were plenty nice and not worthy of deletion, but she listens less. She doesn’t go to any more concerts. She tries not to think about it. 

Two days after the concert, Shinji visits her dorm. “Maki Roll told me about what happened with that nerd!” He says, pointing at the poster on her wall. 

“You know she hates that nickname.” Peko tells him. 

“No, she only hates it when that annoying upperclassman with all the hair gel says it. She kicked him in the knee the other day! It was super cool. But she doesn’t mind when I call her that. Says I’m reclaiming it or something.” He sits on her bed, bouncing a little bit just because he has too much energy, is too alive, is too excited by existence itself. 

“...Alright.” Peko concedes that point, sitting down next to him. 

“Fuyuhiko is mean.” Shinji tells her. 

“He is.”

“He should’ve been nice to you.”

“He should’ve.”

“And I’m gonna fight him!”

“...No, you’re not.”

“ _Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?_ ”

“Security forces.”

Shinji shrugs at that. “Okay, so maybe I’m not going to fight him. But I can do this!”

Before Peko can ask what this is, he stands up, takes the poster from the wall, hides behind it, and in some indecipherable accent, Shinji says “Hi, I’m Fuyuhiko Kuzuryuu and I’m the worst living human being and I only sing stupid love songs because I don’t know how to actually talk to girls in real life.”

Peko chuckles at that and Shinji keeps going, listing off every flaw he can think of a human being having before putting a tear in the poster. Peko helps him finish ripping it up, and they throw it in the trash together. 

***

December turns into January. It’s too late to buy Maki a scarf, but Peko finds her some good eyeliner that she puts on the day after she gets it. Shinji’s birthday is in July, and she starts putting money away for a soccer ball, one of the nice ones with team logos on it. For Kiyotaka, she buys two spiral notebooks, the kind with nice, thick paper. He takes notes in them and is forever sending her pictures of his notes just to prove how useful he finds it, always with a _Thank you, Peko!_ attached to the message. It’s sweet. It’s nice. It’s better than stupid meet-and-greet tickets by a long shot. 

It only stings if she thinks about it. 

***

Peko visits her mother’s home in Osaka every Tuesday. She and Shinji have visited every Tuesday ever since she lost custody, faithful for no clear reason other than the fact that a show of faithlessness would send their mother after them. She’s drunk and babbling about how much she loves Peko when they arrive, about how she ought to be a better mom, about how she’s sorry, sorry, sorry. When Peko’s face doesn’t move into one of sympathy, it turns to screaming. Peko is at least able to get Shinji away from it before it gets too bad. She deals with the worst of it herself and makes a note to borrow Maki’s threadbare scarf because now there are fingerprint-shaped bruises littering her throat. 

She still hears the screaming long after she gets back to her dorm at Hisako’s, and she can’t even listen to her favorite song, one of Fuyuhiko’s solos from the first album, to drown it out. It brings up a screaming of a different breed when she does, and Peko just wants things in her head to be silent for once. 

***

Peko sits on the floor of Kiyotaka’s room one evening, half-reading a tabloid article about what’s been going on with Hypothetical Infinities these days, and she gets to a paragraph about how since mid-December, Fuyuhiko’s been nicer to his fans lately. It speculates on causes, points to a possible girlfriend, and white-hot anger clogs up her throat and she tries to scoff, but it sounds more like she’s choking. 

Kiyotaka looks over at her, ignoring his math for a second. Peko passes the page to him, silent and pointing to the relevant paragraphs. 

“Isn’t that the one who was mean to you?” He asks, pointing to Fuyuhiko’s picture on the page. It’s one she hasn’t seen before, one from a show in Sendai. 

“Mhmm.” She confirms, watching his face as he reads. To her surprise, Kiyotaka smiles. 

“Well, that’s nice!” He declares. “He’s improving as a person! Maybe you got through to him, Peko!”

“Most likely not. Now it just means that he’s a liar, too. At least he was honest earlier. Now he’s two-faced as well.” She shrugs, tries to breathe, tries to make sense of the words in front of her, and fails miserably. 

“You’re being too cynical! Have hope!” Kiyotaka tells her. “Maybe he’s really changed.”

“I doubt I could have that sort of effect, Taka.” Peko glances over the rest of the article, which is just speculation about how each of the members will spend their time when the tour ends next week. It predicts that Fuyuhiko will go to Kobe. Even Peko knows better than to think that. 

“I think so.” He counters. “You have more weight than you give yourself credit for. Also, did you see my flashcards anywhere?”

Peko hands him the cards that were half-hidden beneath her skirt and their study session goes on as usual. She thinks that he has too much faith in her. 

***

Ibuki announces that Fuyuhiko is in Amagasaki like it’s a good thing. Peko’s ears start ringing again and another denunciation starts building up in her throat, this time about his new attempts to save face and how cheap it is. 

She hears which trains he rides and where he frequents and changes her whole schedule to avoid him. She’s late for her Tuesday trip to her mother’s, she switches shifts with Kirumi at the last minute, she is too early for her brother’s soccer game and leaves before the half. It’s stupid and it’s childish and she does it anyways. 

Peko doesn’t want to see him. 

She has to see him. 

She’s still angry. 

She doesn’t care. 

She has something to say. 

She doesn’t have any words left. 

She is a conglomeration of contradictions and paces her dorm room so many times that she’s certain that she can navigate it with her eyes closed. It’s so frustrating that Peko looks up if it’s possible for the emotion to kill you. Yes, she discovers, but it’s often indirect and she thinks that she’s unlikely to give herself a stroke at fifteen, so she doesn’t worry about that any longer. 

“You can’t just avoid him for forever.” Akane says after a week and a half of this.

“I can try.” Peko shoots back. 

“Yeah, but what fun is that? You can’t chew him out if you can’t see him and like, bottling up your anger and whatever isn’t good for you.” And dammit, Akane is right and Peko knows it, so she sighs and gives up her point, but she certainly isn’t going to go out of her way to seek him out. Peko isn’t desperate. Akane is satisfied enough with that answer and heads off to gymnastics practice, leaving Peko in silence. 

It’s four ‘o clock on a Friday afternoon. She would normally go out and get some snacks for the weekend around now, maybe buy a cheap pair of sunglasses for Ibuki’s ever-growing collection of them, maybe get herself a cup of coffee if she was craving one. That routine shouldn’t stop for Fuyuhiko. That routine won’t stop for Fuyuhiko. And if he is there, if Peko does see him, might as well get the confrontation over now, get all of the anger out sooner rather than later. There’s no use in putting it off any longer. 

So she gets on the train, and she goes.


End file.
